It’s based on a European-funded online project run by the Citizenship Foundation and Plan International.

By chance, I managed to borrow a manual from another organisation.

It raised some interesting questions in my mind about engaging learners, knowledge and online debate. And, not least, Margaret Roberts’ question “Where’s the geography?”

There has been a considerable amount of learning resources on climate change. This represents another chunky contribution in the clamour for attention. I don’t think a single resource is appropriate for such an important and wide-ranging subject matter. However, it takes teachers’ time and expertise to sift through the alternatives in order to arrive at a programme that suits their school. We need to be able to share what works in different circumstances.

Here is my Connecting-young-people-through-climate-change PPT [pptx 5.8mb or pdf 2.2 mb] presentation for the workshop. We did an activity from learning resource unit five (weblink) and discussed the questions ‘why climate change?’ and ‘why debate online?’ The PPT includes a small selection of links to climate change learning resources.

There is huge potential in this type of project – mainly for the direct participants – but, I feel, there are many aspects of engagement using online tools (by adults or young people) that need further frank discussion for future projects to benefit.

Also worth mentioning here is Poverty2Prosperity another EU-funded project engaging learners in online debate. There are two downloadable packs: Biodiversity and Poverty; and Climate Change and Economy. The P2P Challenge Packs won a Geographical Association Silver Award in 2011. The online element involved young people to suggest ideas to go forward into a Charter and then vote on them. Evidently this process was met with more enthusiasm in Bulgaria and Hungary than in the UK. The Ghana page is sadly blank. However, there is some content of substance on the site.

I have written a preview blog on the GA Conference 2012 for Hodder Education here>

Some other reflections on the conference appear on my blog here>

For other presentations at the GA Conference 2012 see here>

Not long ago the window on the world through geography textbooks was monochrome. When I started teaching the department had what I called a ‘museum draw’ of little tins containing black-and-white filmstrips. It was a large, neglected, resource.

Now we almost take for granted the quality and sheer quantity of the visual media available to us. These days we consume photographs and create them at such low cost.

There is much that can and has been said about the use of photographs in textbooks and more recent media on how images are selected and how they are used to represent places. (For example, see Photos in global learning by Graham Eyre in Primary Geographer, Spring 2010. By subscription or purchase.)

However, my interest here is in the ways young people can create their own images and interrogate the decision-making process of photography for geographical learning.

One of the projects that first excited me about young people’s use of photography was Shootback. Photographer Lana Wong first visited Mathare, Nairobi’s largest slum, in January 1995. Two years later she launched Shootback, a project that put basic point-and-shoot cameras in the hands of 32 teenage boys and girls from slum families. The book, Shootback: Photos by Kids from the Nairobi Slums (Booth-Clibborn Editions, 2000), is a collage of pictures and words, taking the reader into the slum without the mediation of the foreign photographer’s eye. The photographs speak eloquently of friends, family, football fever and the harsh realities of everyday life in the slums. Like the Shootback project itself, the book was backed by the Ford Foundation, Netherlands Development Assistance (NEDA) and the Stromme Memorial Foundation (Norway). Read this 1999 BBC review of the book. You can purchase the book here.

The Shootback website no longer exists but the project was cited in the Global Eye, Autumn 2005, with a learning activity based on some of the photographs. Global Eye also reported on school projects where disposable cameras had been taken by and sent to children in different parts of the world and processed in the UK.

More recently Plan UK has presented Shoot Nations with Shoot Experience and the United Nations “to encourage young people to express their thoughts on global issues through photography – a cross-cultural and language-free communication tool.”

Between 2006 and 2010 the project included an annual photography competition, photography workshops, and a global touring exhibition. 2010′s exhibition sat alongside the World Press Photo exhibition at the UN Secretariat building in New York City. Sadly, it has not continued due to lack of funding but the still site contains a superb array of images responding to each brief and is ripe for inspiration. Young people have created images of stunning appeal

Now in its fourth year, Colliers Green Focus has offered workshops for schools’ fieldwork with a geographer, photographer and a digital camera for every pupil. The results are explored and selected and then submitted for a competition and exhibition. There is now a ‘mobile’ version for schools to submit their own images. Read more here.

For June 2012 Colliers Green Focus has developed My School in Focus, a project to celebrate the UK’s first ever National Photography Month.

“Whilst we are taking more pictures than at any other time, the fleeting nature of digital images means we are printing or keeping fewer of these important documents. National Photography Month aims to encourage the nation to get more involved in photography, and to explore new ways to capture and keep life’s most important moments.” Send for a booklet here.

Through working with this project I began to appreciate photographers more and became interested in street photography. I can highly recommend the 52-week blog project Street Photography Now and the book by the same title by Sophie Howarth and Stephen McLaren (Thames and Hudson, 2011) available here.

If you are inspired by this approach, I also suggest Going Candid – an unorthodox approach to street photography, by Thomas Leuthard, July 2011, available free (or ‘pay a favour forward’) online here. Intriguingly, all the photographs are in black-and-white.

I believe, as geographers, we are inclined towards the visual media. We are keen to see places, near and far, and through our own photography we make places.

Is this personal, creating sense of geography strong in your department?

First published by Hodder Geography Nest

More on my interest in photography >

Republic have recently  raised questions about the Diamond Jubilee celebrations in schools and the Secretary of State for Education found himself in a pickle over wanting to send a copy of the King James Bible to every school in England.

Education Act 1996 sections 406 and 406

There has been one case brought under this law, according to a letter in The TES:

”In 2007, a parent challenged the Labour administration’s decision to distribute a copy of Al Gore’s documentary An Inconvenient Truth to schools. The judge distinguished between the promotion of partisan political views, which is illegal, and the presentation of partisan political views, which is not.”

John Fowler, policy manager, Local Government Information Unit

It should be noted that the cost of distributing An Inconvenient Truth was met by the Foundation. Michael Gove is said to have been told to look for private sponsorship to fund his bibles.
It’s an interesting comparison.

Promotion or presentation: two quite different activities.

What do you actually do?
What language do you use?

If you want help to avoid stormy waters, please contact Angus Willson >

I am reminded of this slogan when I hear criticism repeated by the Secretary of State for Education (England) that the main fault in the school system in low expectations. Whoever declared they were not aiming at achievement of higher standards? I consider his claim a very convenient elitist cop-out and I am deeply suspicious of the personal and political motivation.

My mind also casts back to one of the radical shake-outs of the local education advisory service I experienced in the late eighties. The mantra was taken from Tom Peters’ Thriving on Chaos. The bulleted-message was made clear to those who did not wish to move with the times: they should ‘learn to love change’ or move on. And some read what was in it for them and did take their cue to retire early. There was a thrusting new wave of post-holders called advisory-teachers for certain subjects. Elsewhere there was duplication and certainly tiredness. If you weren’t part of the solution you were part of the problem.

Now, two stories about the advisory service which shows that I do not have rose-tinted spectacles about a by-gone era:

1. While teaching I attended, in my own time, subject meetings run by two Inspectors (as they were called at the time) and one would routinely fall asleep and this would receive no comment at all.

2. When I joined the advisory service I would meet my line-manager in an empty office in a disused building in a school’s grounds. In addition to an office in County Hall, he had an unknown office with a phone line for outgoing calls, but no-one else knew the number, where he would work and have meetings undisturbed. This was before email or mobile phones, of course.

You see how this was incompatible with the fast-moving, ‘loads-a-money’ times. We have since learned, of course, that the pace of change is even faster. We now respond to global change like no-one is in charge anymore, it just happens.

So, this is where I missed my chance in to complete the money-spinning riposte that would sit alongside business and self-improvement books on railway stations and all good booksellers. I anticipated that a pendulum would swing and I would start a bandwagon rolling (clichés are required for this type of book) with the title:

Stability: the new dynamic

I realised this satire could be interpreted as intensely conservative and would require defence of how things were rather than how things could be. But that misses the point: there is no destination in mind. It is about the process, the decision-making, the means are more important than the ends. It is a about fast-paced innovation for the sake of change.

Think how powerful it could be for ‘remaining just the same’ to be a default position. Change brought about only through tried and tested experimentation with proper controls. Alterations could be bedded-down before seeing what the effects were. Reflection would be valued over knee-jerk reaction. It would be a scientific method not a business-driven profit model of change.

It is now called the pre-cautionary principle but I didn’t know that at the time. This is an “approach states that if an action or policy has a suspected risk of causing harm to the public or to the environment, in the absence of scientific consensus that the action or policy is harmful, the burden of proof that it is not harmful falls on those taking the action.” (Wikipedia)

I don’t intend to dismiss Peters entirely for his call for total customer orientation has been powerful and democratic. He still hangs around at www.tompeters.com and on Twitter @Tom_Peters

Ten years later there was another global bestseller, an allegory, called Who moved my cheese? also purporting to show people how they must manage themselves for a new business climate – but, in fact, advocating structural reorganisation and cost-cutting. These things have away of coming around.

This week a Department for Education statement included the claim “the status quo has never been an option” which harks right back to Tom Peters. What was this urgent change? Yes, pensions. One issue we have had to consider and to understand for years, for a whole generation. The action was required years ago and now they make political capital about the failure to see the need for change earlier. In other words they spend so long tinkering with short-term change and ignore longer-term planning.

Furthermore, in his preface Tom Peters’ writes
“The winners of tomorrow will deal proactively with chaos, will look at the chaos per se as the source of market advantage, not as a problem to be got around. Chaos and uncertainty are (will be) market opportunities; capitalizing on fleeting market anomalies will be the successful business’s greatest accomplishment.”

Is this ‘opportunity’ really what drives Michael Gove and the tory-led coalition on the school system?

I strive for positive thinking. Maybe, after all these years, I have written the introduction to my management book.

Can I help your organisation manage change in a people-appropriate fashion? Can I help you and your team with the professional changes you face?

References:
Peters, Tom (1987) Thriving on Chaos: Handbook for a Management Revolution, Harper.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Thriving-Chaos-Handbook-Management-Revolution/dp/0060971843

Johnson, Spencer (1999) Who Moved My Cheese: An Amazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life, Vermilion.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Who-Moved-My-Cheese-Amazing/dp/0091816971

Written Ministerial Statement on teachers’ pensions, 20 December 2011
http://www.education.gov.uk/a00201155/written-ministerial-statement-on-teachers-pensions
and as this link will not remain for ever (see what I did there) here is the quote:
“Reforms to public sector pensions are essential – the status quo has never been an option.”

Bart Simpson on Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bart_Simpson

Willson, Angus (whenever) Stability: the new dynamic, Pannage

I was reminded in a recent meeting of the Sustainable Schools Alliance, at England’s Department for Education, about the guidance provided in 1999 for ‘a voluntary code of practice’ in ‘supporting sustainable development through educational resources’. Given the effort put into this documentation by two government departments and various non-governmental organisations it merited more attention and a longer life than it received.

It deserves regular scrutiny and, as I couldn’t find it on the internet, I am happy to resurrect it here for consideration. Ann Finlayson, of Sustainability and Environmental Education, made the point at the meeting that pioneers in education for sustainable development have something to say. Not, I hasten to add, that 1999 was in any sense a beginning for ESD but sometimes the legacy is overlooked in the drive for new interpretations and new policies. This is an important point as we move beyond the era of a formal Sustainable Schools policy (upper-case) and, yet, there is continued and wide-spread interest in sustainable schools (lower-case).

I should also like to offer support companies and organisations in meeting this code of practice and to maintain high standards in other ways. Evaluation and quality assurance is part of that ‘having something to say’ about the process and the products of teaching and learning.
Contact Angus Willson >

Ten principles of good practice

Content
Principle 1: PRINCIPLES OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
Resources should foster understanding of the principles of sustainable development.

Principle 2: INTEGRITY
Any information and data provided should be accurate, current and verifiable.

Principle 3: BALANCE
When purporting to give a balanced account of an issue, resources should accurately reflect the broad range of informed opinion on the subject.

Principle 4: VALUES AND ATTITUDES
Resources should help people explore values and develop responsible attitudes in relation to their fellow citizens and the environment, from local to global level.

Principle 5: KNOWLEDGE AND SKILLS
In addressing environmental and development issues, resources should help develop the knowledge, skills and competencies to enable people to participate effectively in their resolution.

Principle 6: USER-CENTRED APPROACH
To ensure maximum take-up, resources should be easy to use and appropriate for the intended audience.

Process

Principle 7: NEED
Producers should be able to demonstrate there is an identified need for the proposed resource.

Principle 8: DEVELOPMENT
Producers should ensure that the development of the resource is inclusive, participative and has drawn on appropriate educational expertise.

Principle 9: PRODUCTION
Producers should demonstrate that the production process has followed best sustainable practice wherever possible.

Principle 10: PROMOTION AND PRODUCTION
Producers should consider the implications of promotion and distribution from the outset and ensure that they are effective, appropriate and accessible.

Source: Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions / Department for Education and Employment (1999) Sustainable Development: a guide to selecting educational resources. Crown Copyright.

Download the code of conduct and related questions presented in Ten-principles-of-good-practice. (Word 22kb)

Also read Ofsted’s Schools and Sustainability (May 2008).

There is no way to avoid the indiscretion. Anyone who knows me from this period of my working life will recognise the context of this dysfuntional organisation. I was appointed into difficult circumstances without honest disclosure by those involved. However, I don’t want to dwell on the negative aspects.

I was committed to make the most of a situation, which was not of my making, to turn it around. An important part of that opportunity was to develop the relationships with the new colleagues who had been through a period of uncertainty. It required people management and it worked. The quote above, from an occasional visitor to the office, shows the atmosphere had changed.

Laughter really is the best medicine. I have been an advocate of the view that “if it ain’t fun, we don’t do it”. Sometimes it is a hard dictum to adhere to when the going gets tough. The most enjoyable hard-work I have done has been with people who had different interests. Single-interest people are generally not very interesting people. They need a more varied perspective. Taking oneself too seriously is usually without regard to the wider picture. Enjoyment, a marker of enthusiasm, gains success. It works for me. I don’t believe the cure has to hurt to do you any good.

Humour can be slippery and dangerous. Not everyone gets being light-hearted and to avoid offense it must be appropriate. But I see it as a sign of passionate commitment. It’s serious.

I still have that sense of fun to bring to new areas of work.

Source of title:
“Political songs are entertaining and inspiring. You don’t have to be solemn to be serious!”
Roy Bailey, folk musician

Postscript
Some colleagues might laugh at this upbeat perspective because there is also an ‘inner-Mr Grumpy’ lurking within. I wrote a guest post on www.grumpiesontheblog.co.uk where I explained:

A good old moan is a coping technique and is usually about something over which you have no control. Getting it off your chest just makes you feel better. And that’s the paradox: having a grump is live enhancing. It’s enjoyable and fun! File under ‘sense of humour’. The pressure-valve is released and you move on. In grumpiness rests our well-being.

Reference: http://www.grumpiesontheblog.co.uk/mr-grumpy/

He used the Egg Information Society, not the actual British Egg Marketing Board, as an example of a body determined to get their special interests into schools. As life imitates art, this industry body is now called the British Egg Information Society. It tried to resurrect the ‘go to work on an egg’ adverts and they were considered unsuitable for modern dietary advice raising the ire of the anti-PC brigade. [Express, 2007)

I also remember the case of the historical time-line made available free for classrooms which placed the first creation of wheat-based breakfast cereal alongside the defeat of Napoleon and other significant events. We had posters with a discrete logo of the National Coal Board but the chocolate-bar vending machines in the mid-eighties were the first deliberate commercial penetration of school corridors and classrooms which is widespread now.

The objection was not eggs or Weetabix per se but the zeal for a specialised interest in which everyone else was expected to share. Paradoxically, the current government claims it wants to avoid such intrusions and that these matters are best left to the teaching profession. Almost without exception advocates want their self-interest added to the school curriculum.

To these interests with a commercial imperative have to be added the huge gamut of voluntary sector bodies each with their own special perspective. I could have funded a major project with a pound for every time I have heard NGO education staff say, ‘teachers should…’ when they ought to have been saying ‘teachers could...’. In this vein, they would advocate that Ofsted should inspect ‘It’ to add to the importance of what they wanted. This approach employed a third-party stick to gain an advantage. The NGO staff had their own work pressures, too, in making sure they were deemed successful.

Once these learning materials were called ‘sponsored’ and the purpose was for a company to provide a resource which was not funded from public sources or mainstream publishers. The content was expressly not about the product or service of the sponsoring company. At some point the pseudo-altruism evaporated and they became open about wanting something in return and not necessarily just the warm-feel of doing good. On the other hand, there was a sense of obligation emerging which implied companies should be engaged in the educational process as part of their license to operate. This has become part of what is now known as corporate social responsibility.

The Guardian Environment Blog cites a recent example of where it goes wrong: a Canadian oil and gas company producing a colouring book being sent into schools with an agenda of impressing upon young minds the value of natural gas resources being exploited in their community (see link and reference below). It really is surprising that such an unsubtle approach is even considered.

I was immersed in these issues when I left my teaching post to work for Kent County Council education department in partnership with Eurotunnel and ended up doing so for eight years (background on Pannage site). There is much more to be said on this time but there is one instance that comes to mind when thinking about what we were doing. Sir Alastair Morton, co-Chairman of Eurotunnel, was being briefed on the education work and, as he munched through a plate of digestive biscuits, I patiently explained that our interest was in enquiry learning that raises issues and not just in passing on fixed solutions. At the end, showing he understood it all, he fixed me with steely eyes and said ‘You mean we are producing better protestors.’

The public affairs team at Eurotunnel produced a publication called Beyond a Tunnel which tells the story of involvement with the local community. Under education the objectives are listed as:

• to play an active role in developing a relevant curriculum
• to derive maximum mutual benefit by pooling the expertise of business and education
• to enlarge the potential recruitment pool by making young people more employable
• to promote an understanding of common European goals and ideals

A page from this publication is shown to the right.

Since the early nineties the commercialisation of the education service, not just the curriculum in schools, has expanded considerably. This wider scenario merits another post but, with the 2010-government, education policy in England is inclined toward non-intervention: a ‘free-market, anything goes’, if you like.

However, with direct reference to young people, a recent publication by Consumer Focus Scotland (see below) states:

“Schools must ensure that commercial sponsorship does not lead to inappropriate marketing to children and young people.

Schools also have to consider other implications of sponsorship that do not apply in the same way to other public sector organisations; for example, in ensuring that any educational resources provided are not biased or that children are not being used to encourage their parents to shop for a particular brand.”

This publication provides a useful checklist of six principles and these questions:

“Overall, do the benefits to pupils outweigh the costs? [Principle 1]

Does the sponsorship support health promotion? [Principles 2 and 3]

Does the commercial sponsorship conform to the legal regulations and industry codes of practice in relation to advertising and promotion of products to under 16s? [Principle 3]

Is the level of marketing activity proportionate? [Principle 4]

Is the sponsorship for additional services or improvements, not to fund core public services? [Principle 5]

Does the sponsorship support the curriculum and provide added value to children’s learning? [Principle 6]”

Contrast this perspective with the Education and Employers Taskforce website declaration that, in connection with academies and specialist schools, “Sponsoring a school is a great way to influence the educational experience of future employees.”

I know which approach I regard as well-conceived and can spot the one that seems to compromise the basis of our education system. We need the strong values in teaching and learning to be ‘making better protestors’. We should not just trying to make a profit from the production of better employees or consumers.

I am keen to facilitate discussion and provide advice on these issues for organisations and companies.

References
‘Fracking’ company targets US children with colouring book
Gas extraction company produces colouring book for US children featuring ‘Talisman Terry, your friendly Fracosaurus’
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2011/jul/14/gas-fracking-children-colouring-book

Consumer Focus Scotland (March 2009) Guidelines on Commercial Sponsorship in Schools

http://www.consumerfocus.org.uk/scotland/files/2010/10/Sponsorship-in-Schools.pdf

Eurotunnel (May 1993) Beyond a Tunnel, Eurotunnel

When asked if I missed teaching, I would answer that it was the spirit and humour of the staff room that I missed most. Later jobs had their own pressures, but in teaching, surrounded by critics as it is, professional colleagues are a very important strength.

We did miss living by the sea in Deal and Walmer after moving to Ashford. The characteristics of the place to live and work was an important factor for the early working experience, too. It was undergoing change as the main employment of the coal-mines disappeared and the Dover port activities were transformed. Combined with the mobile nature of the marines, since gone, and other features of sea-side town life made for a challenging social mix. The beguiling charm of the place could not conceal the problems.

This photograph shows a number of other staff making up a hockey team to play against a school team or, perhaps, another school. I don’t remember the result of the match. This group includes a number of people who started working there at about the same time as me.

Deal staff hockey 1979-80?

Back: Tony Hollow, Ian Pettitt, Angus Willson, Ron Canwell, Alan Hodges
Middle: Elaine ?, Malcolm Perry, Graham Millar, Roger Darby
Front: Sue ?, Sue Greenhalgh

So much has happened in schools, and beyond, in the intervening years it is like looking back at a more distant era. I have met up with Chris Hardy a number of times since and he always manages to remind of enough, with an alternative perspective, to avoiding viewing those formative times through rose-tinted spectacles.

I left Deal on a secondment to the local authority not knowing that I wouldn’t return. It was what I now regard as phase one of a four-phase working life. I had learned the importance of  having an interest in the people around you.

This post also appears at
http://pannage.blogspot.com/2011/01/colleagues-at-work-1978-1987.html [opens in a new window]

But 1 December 1990 was an important stage-managed breakthrough of joint Anglo-French significance. For the first time, the two teams of construction workers would meet under the Channel. Some people even imagined that they would not! The emphasis was, quite rightly, on the two engineers and their hand-shake. What I remember most from the underground coverage is the blast of wind hitting the two flags as the air pressure equalised. With my Mother and Father as guests, we watched on large screens at the Exhibition Centre in Folkestone. [see photo]

Eurotunnel Breakthrough Commemorative Medal

Whatever perspective people held before construction was underway in 1987, the breakthrough was a major step in Britain’s relationship France and, indeed, with the rest of Europe. It was also a powerful message that this engineering project could be turned into the reality. They did have their own set of difficulties but it was not due to the tunnelling that the opening to services was delayed through 1993. Robin Gibson, who was a fresh-faced BBC Radio Kent reporter twenty years ago, has been doing a series of local television programme short and grudging items about the tunnel breakthrough this week. This type of coverage can be contrasted with the documentary on French television.

Documentary from France 5
TUNNEL SOUS LA MANCHE : 20 ANS DÉJÀ !
http://documentaires.france5.fr/documentaires/tunnel-sous-la-manche-20-ans-d%C3%A9j%C3%A0

TML Contractors Breakthrough Meda

The photograph also shows Sarah Craig (McCullough) who, along with Lucinda Campbell-Gray and myself, made up the teachers on the education team. We worked with a fine bunch of people at the Exhibition Centre, and the wider public affairs team, lead by Tony Berkeley (Gueterbock), which included Claire Whiddon’s talented design team. Between us we interpreted and visualised what all the muck-shifting, concrete-laying and the big train-set would mean in years to come. We understood the operational service would become more prosaic than the fanciful notion of travelling with ease under the Channel. The Eurotunnel and Eurostar services are almost taken for granted now, but the memories of that breakthrough moment will remain with us.

References
See Channel Tunnel Curriculum Development Project
BBC On this day

Post also appears at
http://pannage.blogspot.com/2010/12/channel-tunnel-breakthrough-20-years.html